Seongyeon Ko

PhD, Cornell University
MA, Seoul National University
BA, Seoul National University

Teaching

Seongyeon Ko supervises the Korean language program and serves as advisor for the East Asian Studies Major (Korean Area Track) and the Korean minor. He has developed and taught Korean at all levels, from beginning to advanced courses, as well as courses on the linguistic structure of Korean and other East Asian languages.

Research

Professor Ko's primary research interests center around theoretical as well as historical phonology of Korean and its neighboring Northeast Asian languages. For example, his dissertation explores the role of retracted tongue root harmony in the development of a variety of modern vowel systems of the Korean, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages. He is also interested in fieldwork-based language documentation and description of the endangered languages spoken in Northeast Asia. He is currently finalizing his book manuscript based on his dissertation and preparing new books on Korean phonetics/phonology (co-authored) and Jeju Korean. He is also conducting acoustic studies of vowels in "Altaic" languages.​